LONDON, January 2017— 170 business leaders representing 70 schools from 23 countries gathered to celebrate excellence in business at a black-tie celebration at the Savoy Hotel in London. The Association of MBAs (AMBA) called this forward-thinking group together to celebrate its 50th anniversary, which marks decades of work raising the profile of global business programs and resulting excellence in MBA students, graduates, business schools and employers.

Liaison International, the leader in graduate admissions management and a new strategic partner of AMBA, took the opportunity to showcase their shared pioneering commitment by sponsoring the Innovation Award, a recognition that celebrates business schools that are pushing the boundaries in terms of creativity in practice and, according to AMBA, “taking risks in the pursuit of the new.”

The Innovation Award, sponsored by Liaison, was presented to Grenoble École de Management’s Tech It! Project, which leverages the same principles of gamification that major companies use for various purposes — specifically brand image, talent detection, recruitment or training — to support innovation and technology transfer.

“At Liaison, innovation is the cornerstone of all our products and services,” said George Haddad, Founder and CEO of Liaison, “For this reason, we are proud to honor the business school that has embarked on a project that has added value to the school and to the profession.”

For AMBA and Liaison, innovation began before and continues after the gala. In October, they announced the formation of BusinessCAS, the Liaison-powered Centralized Application Service (CAS) aimed at promoting program awareness and streamlining application processes for MBA schools and programs.